


Time to Think

by drowninginchamomiletea



Series: Kannao shorts [2]
Category: Persona 4
Genre: Drabble, F/M, kannao - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-11-29 16:48:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11444982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drowninginchamomiletea/pseuds/drowninginchamomiletea
Summary: Naoto takes some time to reflect on her relationship with Kanji.





	Time to Think

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I've spent some time over the past couple days writing a little drabble of what goes through Naoto's mind when she's walking home from school with Kanji sometime during their third year. This is a school year that doesn't get a lot of attention in P4 fics, and I was curious about how the RisKanNao kids would have evolved at that point.
> 
> Also Rise ships it XD

Naoto hung up her phone.

"My apologies, Kanji-ku—er, Kanji. I had to take that call; it was an important case update." 

"The Sendai case?"

"Yes. That was the field detective on the case. He noticed I was free this afternoon and thought to contact me with his new findings."

It was a bright, sunny Wednesday afternoon, though there was a chill in the air that set Naoto's teeth on edge. It was early November in her last year of high school, and she was walking home with Kanji Tatsumi. The comfortable silence that had fallen between them as they walked gave her time to think about the past two years they'd spent together.

Kanji had worked up the nerve to confess his love to her on the third of October that year. She still hadn't done anything about it. Except... She _had_  promised to make an effort to drop the honorific from his name. 

The suspense that hung around the topic of his confession, and his attraction to her, felt oddly stale nearly four weeks later. It was still there, certainly, but it had... Dulled. She didn't know what she was supposed to do. How she was supposed to act. What she was supposed to say. 

So she acted as though nothing had happened. She let life move on, as life does, while she thought. However, she did notice a few small changes. She caught Kanji looking at her with an adoring, unguarded smile more often now, and she noticed that he was more relaxed around her than ever before. 

If someone were to ask her to classify her relationship with the young tailor, she wasn't sure she'd be able to answer. They were friends, but she thought she felt something different lately, since about a week after he confessed. Certainly not romantic, but not really quite platonic either. Something in between. Each would occasionally find their fingers brushing against the other's palm, and they held silent conversations through gestures and expressions. Once in a while their eyes would meet and they would exchange a look that neither one could really decipher, but both knew they liked. 

They were spending more and more time together, too. As Naoto had chosen to work cases out of her home office in Inaba so she didn't have to take time off school, she was also able to spend more time with her friends. Rise, too, had decided at the beginning of the school year to postpone all work, except for photoshoots and the occasional advertising deal, until she graduated in February.

At some point around the beginning of that school year, Naoto had realized that she was spending the majority of her free time with Kanji. Rise's reaction was, surprisingly, to distance herself slightly. She certainly wasn't intending to dissolve her friendship with the two, but she simply seemed to want to...  _Observe._ She was always passing by when the two bumped into each other in public or at school, and Naoto couldn't help but think that the idol orchestrated each encounter herself. It was particularly frustrating because Rise seemed to be using the extra time to focus on her studies, so Naoto didn't have any good reason to interrogate her about it.

When she tried to dissect her own feelings about the former delinquent... Well, she still wasn't sure. She cared about Kanji deeply, of course; they had almost literally been through hell and back together. However, that was true of all of her Investigation Team friends. So, what then? As she often did with her own emotions and social predicaments, she attempted to step back and treat it as a case. It was simple—that was what she told herself, that is. The details would quite rapidly get out of hand as soon as she reached the point of her, an outside element affected by its new setting, arriving in Inaba and interacting with Kanji, an existing piece of the puzzle and a product of previous and current circumstances.

These thoughts occupied the emotional part of her brain. Meanwhile, her baser, logical mind told her that not only was she a fool to entertain any such distant dreams, but that she had less and less free time with each passing day in the first, making any relationships beyond the platonic realm nigh impossible. 

When she had attempted to express this to Yu, the only one of her friends to whom she felt she could relate on an intellectual level, he had actually _laughed._ When she had indignantly asked  _what_ he found to be so amusing in her plight, he had told her that the emotional brain is base to the logical, and not, as she'd implied, vice-versa. _"_ _Poppycock,"_  she'd rebuked! _"_ _If logic can trump emotion, then logic must hold power over emotion, and the simplest way for this to be the case is for logic to be base to emotion!"_

Yu, however, had suggested she take due pause to think on what she knew of the brain's physical structure and function. And, as he had done many times before, he'd made her feel she was acting an idiot. 

Of _course,_ Shirogane, you _extraordinary_ _fool._ The paleocortex—the primitive, stone-age "old brain"—is largely responsible for basal functions, including emotion and the drives to eat, sleep, and reproduce. The neocortex—the more recently evolved "new brain," the layer of gray matter atop the ancient paleocortex—is where all higher functions, such as complex thought, metacognition, logic, computation, etcetera, reside. _"_ _Therefore_ , _"_ she had been forced to admit, _"_ _yes, emotion is base to logic."_

But what did that prove? Either way, logic generates a more refined and accurate conclusion than does emotion. What difference is shown by which is base to the other? _None,_ she had concluded. Again, though: meaning what? That emotions and logic are to be judged as equals? Foolery. In no world of hers would this hold true.

When all was done and polished, however, she still didn't know why her feelings for Kanji were different from her feelings for anyone else.

Perhaps she simply couldn't understand. Kanji had helped her realize that there was a large part of the emotional sphere that she did not comprehend. True, she was coming to get to know hers and others' emotions better, but that had taken time, and it would likely take more time to do better.

Yes. Given a little more time, she could figure it out. She would need to reach out to her friends, of course, because they understood these things better than she. It would require time, and help, and above all, simple _experience with life,_ for her to fully and truly learn the things about love that she hadn't learned early on in life. But she had those who loved her to help her learn, so she wasn't apprehensive. She feared emotional pain, yes, but she knew her friends could help her wounds heal.

But that time was done for today. Kanji waved farewell as he peeled away from her side when they passed the textiles shop.

"Yo, seeya tomorrow, Naoto!"

She smiled.

"Don't forget to go over those charts we made from your history notes, Kanji." She tipped her cap at him before turning to go on her way, back to her apartment. 


End file.
